By Adri Nurellari
Amidst the many resemblances between the 2005 parliamentary elections and local government polls of 2007 one can identify the indefinable election results which permit both sides, Left and Right, to claim they have won the majority of the votes. In 2005, the Majoritarian electoral system convincingly favored the Democratic Party and the Right, despite the fact that the parties of the Left, altogether, did win far more votes. Something similar appears to be emerging now too, where the Left, via the Majoritarian system has secured the local governance of the majority of the Albanian population, irrespective of the fact that a considerable part of the electorate voted for the parties of the “existing ruling majority” (without saying exclusively “for the Right” as the Environmental Agrarian Party and the Human Rights Union Party cannot be really be considered right wing parties). If it had been a proportional system undoubtedly the victory would have been in the hands of those who won the majority of votes, however, this is the system, it is what it is, and these are the rules of the game.
In Britain, the Labour Party won 35 per cent of the votes but it secured 55 per cent of the seats in Parliament. In the US Presidential elections of the year 2000, Al Gore won a numerical majority however; the way votes were distributed favored George Bush. Both the Labour Party in the UK and George Bush in the US were considered fully legitimate as winners. If it had been said that the failure to win the majority of the votes jeopardized their legitimacy, this would have been the same as umpiring a game using the rules of another game; like umpiring a game of hand ball using soccer rules, calling a goal scored by hand a foul, which maybe a foul in soccer, but in handball, a goal scored by hand is the only acceptable way to score.
This means that the claim of the Right to victory in these elections does not stand. However, neither can full claim be laid to the fact that these elections would have had the same result if they had been parliamentary, because in the conditions of parliamentary elections, electoral conduct differs a great deal; the turnout is better, there are fewer candidates with fewer personal networks, not as occurs with local government council members; there is strategic voting, there are alternative agendas to central agendas and so on.
Irrespective of this, the results of the elections yield several trends that leave room to foresee or imagine what may happen in parliamentary elections, if the current government remains in office. Amidst the multitude of features and messages produced by the results of these elections, what stands out is a tendency towards a jolting of the traditional strong holds of different parties. In particular, this is true of the Democratic Party, which, because it is in office, to a certain degree was also being judged. It is obvious that the Right has won in non-traditional rural and southern zones such as Tepelena, Mallakastra. In these outlying zones, the loss incurred by the Left could easily be attributed also to the presence of independent Left wing candidates who split the Left, or to a lack of monitoring that would have secured the discipline of the electoral process, or to the pressure exerted by central government through employment and allocation of funds to local government levels. However, for a moment, let us take for a fact that the Right has seriously won in those zones where the vote has been converted and has fled the Left.
The benefits that emanate from the conversion of this Left wing vote accompanied by the cost of the loss of the votes of the Right should never be considered as a victory of the Right, but as a result of populism. The fact that in the traditional Right wing zones, such as Durr쳬 the majority of the electorate did not turn out to vote, and the Left wins, clearly shows that the victory of the principle cities by the Left does not stem from the brilliance of any left wing models of local government, but from disappointment in the Right. In short, the current Government has had accentuated notes of populism and has absorbed votes of an amorphous electorate. But, in the meantime, it has lost the votes of the Right wing electorate.
Populist efforts to implement a pragmatic policy, without a clear-cut ideological identity, applying a harsh anti-corruption or anti- status-quo rhetoric, may well yield an electoral supremacy of the moment, but in the conditions of Albania, there is no evidence that these efforts are fruitful over a medium-term period. Meandering between right and left policies, from small governments to austere savings policies, from slashing taxes to moral attacks against businessmen in their “gilt edged bath tubs”, from the ‘Albania-1 Euro’ initiative to the lifting of excise duty on diesel oil sold to farmers or the raising of minimal wages, all this, without fail, left a mark on the right wing electorate, who do not feel represented. Not to mention as well the failure to deliver concrete results of the fight against corruption and the flirt with Nano, declaring the anti-corruption allegations that, for many years had mobilized many right wing and/or undecided voters, as merely electoral declarations of no particular weight.
Perhaps for the Democratic Party and its leaders it is acceptable to sacrifice political identity, according to the circumstances of the moment, for the sake of the goal of remaining in office. It is a known fact that political parties in Albania do have an ideological deficiency and function as clientele groups, motivated by gaining state favors, when a party comes to office. This thinking motivates many members and supporters of our parties, and this is why the rational, the pragmatic tactics applied by the leadership of the Democratic Party during the past year, do not de-mobilize the members of the party. In such circumstances it is difficult to believe that the loss of these last elections will bring about any kind of reform or rebellion within the Democratic Party.
However, the decision-makers often confuse militant party members with the supporters of a party, and they treat both categories in the same way, both applying an aggressive, harsh and militant rhetoric or bending and abandoning right wing political identity without so much as a qualm. They frequently consider politics as a fully rational activity, where voters are merely materialist who push to secure the maximum of their material benefit. This is sufficient to keep the militants committed, luring them with a job, a tender or a “wink of the eye” for a violation of the law, but not the right wing supporters who, without fail, seek a direct benefit. One typical example illustrating this is the legalization process from which many new arrivals directly profited, who, did not necessarily vote for the Democratic Party in the last elections. All the genuine and active members of all the political parties do not make up more than 100.000 persons, while the number of voters exceeds one million. In other words, what motivates those few militants does not necessarily motivate the many, many followers or swinging voters.
Political commitment, in its composition, has a large subjective dose of irrationalism, which means that many voters vote for a given party for the sake of their passions, convictions, stands, identity, ideals or beliefs and not necessarily for direct, material benefit or merely due to force of habit. A good part of the 2005 electorate voted for the Democratic Party and its leader Sali Berisha, because they were regarded as the most worthy representatives of their passion, identity or even of their beliefs, and not merely because they wanted the DP and Berisha to come to office.
Subsequently, the reading of the results of the local government elections should have brought out not only the Government’s failure to fulfill tangible promises, or to deliver on individual responsibilities of a handful of “scapegoats” who hardly had the autonomy or the authority to make their own decisions, but, first and foremost, this reading should have highlighted the fact that the Democratic Party has lost contact with the traditional right wing electorate. The decision to merely reshuffle the government cabinet, neglecting any change in the manner of governing itself or steering it onto a clear cut ideological course means simply to externalize the problem, which is far from solving the crisis, on the contrary it deepens the illusion and creates a placebo sensation. The fact that the first meeting of the Government after the elections adopted typically left wing and populist decisions, such as the decision to raise subsidies for medicines and pay rises for the healthcare workers, undoubtedly indicates that the message of the last elections has not been read properly. If this contact with the right wing electorate is not re-established through coherent right wing policies, the future of the DP is at stake.
In view of the fact that this populist style of government managed, within 18 months, to turn the electorate of important cities such as Tirana, Durr쳬 Kor衬 Elbasan and Lushnja away from the DP, it can be said that if things continue at this rate over the two and a half remaining years of the mandate, it is possible to foresee a veritable disaster in the oncoming political elections of 2009. At all costs, the loss of the votes of the main cities, must be viewed very accurately and also considered as a forewarning of what will happen in the future with the rural vote too, because it is a known fact that public opinion is formed and structured in the urban environment and then spreads out to and is adopted in the rural zones. It would come as no surprise that at this rate of consumption and abandonment, the worst scenario possible could happen, where the Left wins more than 84 per cent of the seats in the Parliament and this would be a real threat to Albanian democracy, and not just to the Right.
